From Dance To Love
by VerelLupin
Summary: John Hartigan left Nancy Callahan for her own good. Nancy dances to live and dream but most of all to love the one she lost. John Hartigan/Nancy Callahan.


**I saw the trailer for Sin City 2 and just seeing Nancy so broken like that made me sad and this was born.**

** I also listened to Slave to the Rhythm and it got me thinking that Hartigan would have wanted her life to be better but she was too in love with him to really try. (Can you blame her? It is Bruce after all) **

**Either way I've not had the pleasure of reading the comics so this is probably AU as all hell. Any mistakes are mine.**

**Enjoy...**

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He's the exact opposite of Hartigan. He's young, has a full head of sunny blonde hair and is an urban professional. Anybody who knew Nancy said he was exactly what she needed after that whole doomed love affair with John Hartigan.

He has never dealt with the Roarks or ever visited Old Town. He doesn't know that she dances at Kadie's or that her life is marked by a cloud of suspicion she can't shake even now at twenty years of age, not that she's really tried.

He meets her in the grocery store buying steaks for the get together at Dwight's place. They exchange a few words but she refuses to make any more of it regardless of what Gale and the other girls tell her especially Shelly.

A month later she runs into him again at the library where she does her law studies. After the girls find out they convince her to go out with him. He's everything she should want. He's nice and sweet and doesn't seem to care when he does finally see her at Kadie's.

She tells herself that he's the one but when he sees the badge on her night table and she tells him it belonged to her late husband and he looks puzzled, Nancy knows that he'll never climb over the wall that surrounds her heart.

He tries to support her work but he hates that she dances and gets there right as she's finishing her shift to driver her home as if the quicker he gets her out, the less the place will stain her. Her friendships with the other girls are frowned upon and when they argue about them Nancy decides that she will comes off the stage when she's good and ready and not a moment sooner.

She doesn't care how many times he apologizes, it never sounds sincere anyway, or when he shows up and offers her a hand down and a bouquet of roses. The regulars shake their collective heads at the poor fool trying to replace a dead man but nobody bothers to tell him that she's already in love.

Shelly glares at her in annoyance but Nancy sees nothing when she's dancing so there's not point in nagging her, Shelly just teaches the man that when Nancy is on and performing, she is in another place, where he can't reach her. Its not about any of them, it never will be.

Her dances are only for John.

After her number she tips her hat gently and they usually meet back at her place but he stops going to her job after the third encounter leads to another argument. It irritates him that she doesn't care what people say about her and tells her so but she won't budge because the dance is hers and she won't share or stop it for anybody.

A year later, he wants to marry. She accepts as long as she can keep dancing, he almost doesn't agree but the relief in her voice wounds his pride and he accepts her conditions. She sighs knowing that at some point the dancing will have to stop, he'll force her.

She dances with a passion that is lacking in the rest of her life and he begins to resent it by the first month of their marriage. Nancy won't lie to him but then she won't admit that he's right and they are at a stalemate about the something that keeps her out of his grasp.

"Don't do this," he whispers so close that his breath would have stirred her hair if it been real.  
She doesn't ignores him per say but she doesn't listen to the advice either.

"He loves you," he tries again but she turns and twirls the lasso and says quietly to him, "I loved you but it didn't make a difference, you still left me."

"You're not punishing me, baby. I'm not here." He says running a finger lightly along her sweaty back.

"You're punishing me. You may not be here now but it's the only place where I can see you."

"They would have come after you," he whispers following the twists of her curves with his eyes.

"They'll get me eventually," she responds and undoes her top slowly, daring him to break the eye contact he stubbornly makes every time she begins to undress.

He tries to cover her, keep her modest but the phantom fingers slide through the clasp holding the black top together and he can see her flesh through his hands.

"Dance with me," she implores moving her own hands over where his should be.

He shakes his head and vanishes back into the shadows, the song ends and Nancy climbs down from her only refuge. Others clap and whistle, she grins in acknowledgment but as soon as she's alone, the tears break out and coat her lashes.

They don't fall anymore, it's energy she doesn't have so why waste it.

Her home becomes a battlefield not long after the second month and the man she married wants to know why she was married to the man that raped her as a child.

It had cost her a pretty penny to marry a dead man but Nancy hadn't cared. She was never leaving Basin City and no matter how much she studied and pretended to better herself, the money she made would have gone nowhere. So she invested it in the life she had wanted and been robbed of.

Besides if and when Roark got her, she had at least made sure that her tombstone would read Nancy Hartigan. Its not what John would have wanted but then he'd abandoned her, he no longer had a say in what she did with her life, and she'd be buried next to the man that should have been hers.

He threatens to throw out the badge but he can't find it and she won't tell him that it's been pinned to her bra ever since he saw it the first time. The more he digs into the past the more she works, the more she talks to John and the more she realizes that this cannot go on forever.

"Nancy, honey." He begins pulling on the tip of her lasso.  
"Don't lecture me," she hisses and rotates her hips so that the rope is pulled from his hands.

"I'm worried about you," he stops her in mid spin.

Management sees her stumble but she artfully hides it from the regulars, "you're dead, you can't worry."

"Then why am I here?" he asks but she's twisting and turning with her hat pulled low over her eyes hiding the helpless his question reveals. "I have to go," he says and starts to walk away.

"You used to enjoy my dancing."

"It wasn't killing you before." He's at the edge of the stage now, crouched and about to jump down.

She turns and crawls to him, "I can't let you go."

"You have to baby." She shakes her head, tears glistening in her eyes and replicating in his. "He'll leave you soon."

"I don't care," she whispers.

"I'll see you tomorrow." He vanishes and the music is over and she is panting and sitting practically in Dwight's lap, who just gives her an understanding glance and helps her off him. The catcalls are loud and boisterous and she shakes her butt a little to encourage it but Shelly eyes her knowingly.

Nancy had willingly been a slave to the dance and the music that allowed her to conjure him back from the dead. But she can't control the interactions anymore and it time to accept that this can only end one way.

Two months later her divorce is final and she's back where she started: alone, bitter and broken. She's kneeling at his gravestone, fingers gently tracing his name. "I tried to let you go," she says. "I tried to live my life like you wanted."

"Did you?" He's standing causally behind her, a frown on his face.

"You didn't give me much of a choice." She says dusting herself off and he helps her to her feet and tugs her into his arms.

"I guess I didn't. I'm sorry," he mutters burying his face in her sweet smelling hair.

"Don't be. I only ever wanted to be with you," she undoes the buttons of his coat and burrows into it not really wanting to keep the chill away as much as wanting to be closer to him.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," he sounds sad.

"I wasn't supposed to live past nine. You gave me a little longer."

He touches his forehead to hers briefly, feeling her skin get colder. "You sure?"

"I am." She replies and they kiss, an exact duplicate of that snow-covered kiss so long ago.

It's been two years to the day of John Hartigan's suicide and two years since Nancy made herself keep the promise she made him, she tried to go on but ultimately couldn't without him.

An old man died and the young woman followed but at least now John and Nancy Hartigan rested side by side at last.


End file.
